


Answers

by LureSanta



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: Angst, Lure Santa Exchange 2010, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-07
Updated: 2010-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-13 13:04:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LureSanta/pseuds/LureSanta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gift created for Artemis_sparks, created by neverwiser - Posed December 07</p><p>Just how long and how hard would we have loved?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Answers

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really sorry, the other prompts given were all less angsty, but angst is kind of my thing so this is the one I chose. Not a happy Christmas gift, I’m afraid!

In the bleeding heart of the night I try to envisage the world we would have built together. Would you have ever tired of challenging me? Would you have mellowed further than you did? Would you have wanted me to change for you, or would you have changed for me? Or, perhaps, would we have lived this perfect lemon-and-lime existence, and never changed at all, because the contrasts and the sticking points were the heart of our perfection?

 

 

Would you have ever stopped wanting to touch me, wanting to cup my cheek and sip at my lips?

 

 

What would we have been like, I wonder, when we finally made love? Would you have held me close, crushed me to your body? Or would you have wanted me a little further away, hanging over me, such that you could take me whole body in with one, soft, lingering look?

 

 

Would you have smiled, or frowned with concentration? Would you have been hard, harsh, rough like our early encounters? Or would you have been gentle, perhaps too gentle, because you had told me to take care of my kidney, that you didn’t want to lose me?

 

 

I lost you.

 

 

And would your fingers have lingered on my pulse? Would you have wanted to feel the beat, beat, beat of my heart as it crashed against the inside of my chest? I have heard your heart, heard that brave little muscles struggle through each perfect palpitation, but you have not, you will not feel mine.

 

 

Sometimes I wonder if my heart is really beating. I wonder if my blood is really flowing. I wonder if my breath is really dissipating.

 

 

I feel like air without you. I don’t know how else to describe this weightlessness, this insubstantiality, this inability to gain purchase on the world.

 

 

I watch the world now like a child reborn. I have lived in this world for twenty-two-years, but I have only been alive a matter of months. I came alive the first time we argued. The first time we kissed. Each shuddering moment when I felt your fingers on my livid, tainted skin. As I watch the seasons pass, see the faces of those I love, hear the hiss of the wind I can’t remember how it used to feel in that world. I can no longer remember the feeling of being drunk, or the sensation of fear or the tingling of lust. I am empty and broken and all I know is that I loved you, once, and that you’ve left me.

 

 

I blame you for your death, you know. And that one, strong, silent emotion, that flaming anger, _that_ keeps me going. You didn’t have to go. You didn’t have to try and jump the level crossing. You didn’t have to leave me. You didn’t have to die.

 

 

And would you have walked me along the lake? And would you have held my hand? And would you have let me play with your fingers and run my hands through your hair as I stroked my lips along yours? Would you have grown bored of me, one day?

 

 

Would you have been irritated by my unnatural cheerfulness? Would you have been exhausted by my family? Or would you have been endless charmed by me, the way you claimed to be, until one day I awoke, still in your arms, and you were gone?

 

 

You are nearly fifteen years older than I am. You would have left me, one day. I hate you for that. I hate you for how much you made me love you, and how much you made me hurt.

 

 

Would it ever, really, have been the same? Would we have just gone on and on, weeks spiralling into months spiralling into years?

 

 

Would we have lasted, you and I? We were so ridiculously in love: both acting so out of our own comfort zones, and yet so happy. One day, would you have returned to the heartless wreck I saved? Would I have regressed to the child? Life is not a straight road, further and further into infinity. Would we have lasted through its twists and turns, it’s loops and laps, it’s shaking, shivering pain?

 

 

I am unable to answer this question.

 

 

I do not wish to be assured that the answer is yes. I do not wish to be patronised, to be told a what-if story akin to a fairytale, in which Luke Snyder and a precious, still-living Reid Oliver waltz into a painless sunset. I do not seek to know that we would have been forever.

 

 

In my heart, I wonder if perhaps we wouldn’t have been. But I do not seek the unencumbered knowledge.

 

 

I seek to live it. I have been cheated out of your love, out of the moments we could have spent together. If we had fallen apart, then I have been cheated out of your heartbreak. I deserve it. I deserve those experiences. I bought in to loving Reid Oliver, I paid with my heart and my soul, but you were a scam, Reid Oliver, and you never delivered. You left me. You _left me_

 

 

I want to yell at you and argue with you. I want to punch you in the stomach and tear your hair. I want to kill you.

 

 

In some ways, I would have preferred it if I had been the one to kill you. Then I would have had the right to choose the time, the place, the moment. I would have owned your final moments, your final breaths. I would have owned you, Reid Oliver; I could have breathed you in and swallowed you up and carried you with me forever.

 

 

I watched you die as nothing more than a weak and pathetic observer. I was by your side, holding your hand, but I may as well have been a thousand miles away. You wasted these moments, talking about organ donation and Chris Hughes. You didn’t even take the time to tell me, once more, that you loved me.

 

 

I hate you. And that burning ball of hate, like jagged, broken pieces of glass, like fangs around my heart, is keeping me alive. I must continue to hate you, Reid Oliver, I must continue to feel this deep and flaming anger, because otherwise I might have to face the fact...

 

 

...that you’re dead.

 

 

*

 

 

Silence, but for breathing. Taunting. Mocking.

 

 

Silence, but I can hear the endless swansong, the squeal, the neverending beep as you flatline.

 

 

Silence, and I strain my ears for the crackling of flames. I want the burn. I want the flames. I want the sparks and the smoulders and the ash. I want the _fire_. I want the anger.

 

 

I want to hate you. Let me hate you. _Please._

 

 

And would you have let me stay in Oakdale, once your career started to tempt you elsewhere? Would you have let me stay with my family, and with my siblings, and with my parents? Would I have wanted to? Would I have wanted to follow you to the ends of the earth? Is that how much I would have loved you?

 

 

Would you have ever taken me to Boston? Would you have shown me the places and the people that you came from? Would I have ever met your parents, ever have seen you with your family? Would you have trusted me with your history? Would you have taken me to Harvard Square?

 

 

Just how long and how hard would we have loved?

 

 

I have questions and I have no answers. Everything is empty, is open-ended and is incomplete.

 

 

I cannot think of you with smoothness and flow. I cannot think of you as an entirety. Each time I picture you, it is only in part. Your hands. Your eyes. Your shallow, shaking breath, wet with blood from your quivering lips. I want to hate you.

 

 

I love you.

 

 

I miss you. I miss you completing my sentences and my dreams and my love. I am like a jigsaw puzzle, marred terribly by the loss of one crucial piece. Every time anyone looks at me, they see the stain of you on me. I am tainted. I am taken. I am damaged goods for you.

 

 

I want to hate you for destroying me. For leaving me. For loving me.

 

 

I love you.

 

 

*

 

 

You’re dead, and I only have the would-have-beens.

 

 

You’re dead, and I only have the might-have-beens.

 

 

You’re dead, and I don’t have you.

 

 

You’re dead, and I can’t hate you.

 

 

You’re dead, and you won’t let me stop loving you.

 

 

You’re dead, and I can’t be free.

 

 

You’re dead, and I’m not.

 

 

*

 

 

I don’t want to be dead, I don’t think. I don’t think I want to be with you right now. I’m selfish, the spoilt brat you always accused me of being, because I only want you on my terms. I don’t want to follow you into the chasm, into the darkness, into the light. I want you to come back to me. I want to sit right here, and I want to bring you back to me.

 

 

If it was just a breakup, just another fight and another mistake and another stupid overreaction, I know what I’d do. I’d go to you, and apologise profusely. I’d be desperate and earnest and sincere enough to break your heart, and you’d sigh a little and pull me to you, and we’d kiss for moments so perfect, so pure and so precious.

 

 

But I can’t charm my way out of this one.

 

 

You’re dead, and I have no answers.

 

 

You’re dead, and I still love you.


End file.
